What is SATA

All right, what is SATA? It's a new
interface on the computer motherboard used to connect hard drives or
any kind of information drive like a DVD-Rom. It replaces the
older IDE and is not only much faster, but easier to use since you no
longer have to worry about drive jumpers. The cables for this
interface are also much more compact going from 40 pins to only 7.

Currently there are 4 different versions of SATA, they are listed in the table below.

SATA 3.0 - Third generation of SATA, still very new technology, transfer speed here is up to 500MB/s

eSATA
- This is an exterior SATA port. Since cable lengths must be
shorter than USB or Firewire, and transfer speeds with USB 3.0 will be
faster, I stay away from this SATA.

In the picture below, the SATA slots are number 15.
The
view below is the same board without the number.

Make sure to enable AHCI in BIOS, you'll benefit from additional
drive features, this is especially important if you're running an SSD.

Adding a SATA device is simple. Power off the computer,
connect the interface cable and a power wire to your drive. Boot
the computer back up, then once in Windows, right click on my computer
and select Manage. Under disk management, you might have to
initialize and format your new drive for it to work. If you ever fill up all of your SATA slots, you can get a SATA controller card to add more devices.